Shuttle has managed a feat of engineering with the XPC SX58H7. It has shoehorned a Core i7 motherboard into a small(ish) form-factor case - it measures 325 x 208 x 189mm - of the kind we've seen on models such as the SP45H7.
Shuttle XPC SX58H7 Shuttle's XPC SX58H7: engineering miracle?
It is the work of moments to remove the …

COMMENTS

Good stuff - but sensitive to external temperature?

As a former Shuttle owner I was interested to read the review - personally I'm impressed by the way Shuttle constructs their systems for air flow and cooling, and it's generally worth the premium you pay for the SFF.

However, I found mine to be very sensitive to ambient temperature changes: in winter or an air-conditioned office it was stable, but in summer, or with slightly restricted airflow (or possibly underneath a TV, for example), heat build up was much more of an issue. In the end I switched to an off-the-peg gaming laptop, and touch wood I haven't had the heat-related problems of the Shuttle.

SFF - towers have space for a reason!

I went the Small Form Factor route as I was toting my box to work and back on a daily routine.

I wish there were some numbers to the heat and noise above as I'm not sure you could squeeze all that hardware into such small spaces without some compromise.

My Biostar iDEQ 200P had similar issues to the first commentator in the Summertime with overheating, but these days with new GPU and CPU die sizes and hence lower power requirements, this could well be the sweet point for CPU cooling/temps.

I eventually went for a LAN Box from Thermaltake as they could take the full size PSUs which meant I had all the cables I needed for dual graphics cards plus more CPU cooler choice etc. But it was a lot bigger than a standard SFF! But if the power and the cooling are sorted, I'd seriously look at one!

Nice.

I have an old Athlon based shuttle (SN21g2 if I recall). I've had it running overclocked for about five years, through summer and winter without problem. Compared to a full tower, these are a hell of a lot nicer looking, while not as performance compromised as all-in-ones, other sff PCs or net-tops.

Nice box, shame about the upgrades

Having owned Shuttle boxes for many years, I have found them to be quiet, attractive and very reliable. The major drawback in my opinion is that it's either impossible or very expensive indeed to upgrade the motherboard.

This limits their attractiveness greatly in my opinion - my other, non-Shuttle cases have had 3 or 4 new Mobos before becoming totally knackered. I can see my current Shuttle being retired long before it wears out - that's assuming I don't experience a Mobo fault, which might mean buying and entirely new box....